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The boat slowed so quickly, it was like soency brake; ere all tossed forward onto the floor The bridge groaned and rocked, and the peculiar taking aiht that surely either the bridge would give or the holloould--it was squealing like a stuck pig, as if it ht rip down the un, it seee would hold, whichNoeren’t even o! I screae

It didn’t--the thing would never leave me of its own accord So I rushed to the back of the boat and bellied over the stern There was one of its tongues, knotted around the rudder Reue release her ankle, I pulled her over and told her to burn the rudder She did--nearly falling over the side to o

It was like releasing a slingshot The holloay and sla crash; the whole tottering contraption buckled and went tu into the water At the saain sub us forward The sudden acceleration toppled us like bowling pins Sharonhimself, he steered us sharply away from a collision course with the canal wall We flen the spine of the Ditch, a black V of water shooting out behind us

We hunched low should any er The vultures were soine how they’d catch us now

Panting, Addison said, "That was the saround, wasn’t it?"

I realized I’d been holding my breath and so let it out, then nodded E, every nerve jangling with the strangeness of what had just happened This much I knew: this time I’d nearly had him It was as if, with each encounter, I dove a little deeper into the hollowgast’s nerve center The words caue, er onto which I’d ht decide to turn and take a bite out of , it hadn’t

Maybe, I thought, with another atteet ht

Then we’d be unstoppable

I gazed back at the ghost of a bridge, dust and wood pulp spiraling in the air where the structure had stood only e beloatched for a limb to break the surface, but there was only a lifeless swirl of trash I tried to feel for it, butout and empty Then the mud-colored mist closed behind us and painted away the view

Just when I needed a otten itself killed

The boat nodded as Sharon eased the throttle and banked right, through the slowly clearing hastly tenee of the water in a vast unbroken wall, rese not soand fortresslike, with few points of entry We drifted along at a crawl, searching for a way in It was Enize it as more than just a trick of shadows

To call it an alley would’ve been exaggerating It was a slot canyon, narrow as a knife’s edge, a shoulder’s width froh, its entrance ed ladder screwed flat to the bankside I could see only a little distance in before the passage hid itself, curving away into sunless dark